“That first technique is a special healing technique. First it will allow you to heal others. It does this by filling up the cells of the other person with life qi. You can also heal yourself with this technique. The last part contains a more advanced section that teaches you how to fill all the cells in your body constantly with life energy to give yourself increased healing abilities.”
The next book was one of the black books. It also appeared to have a leather cover. Silence of the Grave. The words were written in white.
“This book contains a technique to not only increase your foot speed for close combat, but it also lets you move without making a sound.”
The final book was another black book made from leather. I reached out to take the book from Master Henry, but the moment I touched it the death qi in my body surged towards the book and I felt death qi essence gathering around my body. It was exciting. I had never had anything like this happen before. I looked at the title of the book and read it aloud. “Withering Fist - War Technique.” The words were also written in white.
“This is a technique made to kill. The technique gathers death qi into ones fist. When your fist comes in contact with an enemy the death qi is released like a bomb. The death qi rushes inside of the other person’s body causing great damage and often death. The more advanced sections allow you to cover your entire arms in death qi. The last section of this book teaches you how to cover your entire body in death qi. This means you are able to execute Withering Fist using any part of your body. It is truly a formidable technique.”
I was in awe of these techniques.
“I’m only giving you these techniques for two reasons. One is because these techniques are perfect for you and it would be a shame for someone with so much death and life qi not to learn them. Second I doubt you have any good fighting techniques. If you’re ever in a life or death situation these techniques could save your life. You have a lot of potential and I’d hate to see you die young. Then I would never get to see how far my student can rise.”
“Thank you Master.” I kowtowed once more because of the gratitude I felt in my heart.
“Once you have mastered these techniques we will begin training your fighting capabilities. If you have any questions feel free to seek me out. Goodbye Disciple.”
“Goodbye Master,” I bowed.
I had really struck it rich. I flipped through the techniques and I was blown away with how profound and mysterious these techniques were. It applied life and death qi in ways I had never even considered. The Withering Fist technique was even more deadly than I first thought. It was truly a powerful technique.
Chapter 8
A few weeks later in the early morning, a heavy mist shrouded the mountains behind the school. Within a dense forest, a series of banging sounds could be heard echoing through the mountains. I moved swiftly, a deft figure silently stalking amongst the trees. My fists glowed black as I gave each tree in the area a swift punch. Another bang sound could be heard as my shadow moved amongst the trees like death upon the wind.
The banging sound was produced by each punch. I could vividly feel the deep and powerful strength behind each blow. This was truly a powerful and profound technique. Not a leaf was rustled nor a branch broken. The only sound was the thud of my fist against the bark. The speed of my movements would have made it impossible for any normal person to identify me.
It had taken weeks of practice and more than a few classes had been skipped for me to reach this point. Luckily Bob and Nyxra were willing to keep me updated on our normal classes and bring me the homework assignments. Even after all this time I had only grasped the fundamentals of this technique known as Withering Fist. It was a technique that sent shivers down my spine. In my fists I held the power of death.
I had also mastered the silence part of the Silence of the Grave technique. I had doubled my footwork speed, but the technique was capable of so much more. When fully mastered my speed could increase as much as five times my normal speed. I was years away from full mastery. Despite that I still moved with the grace of a leaf floating on the wind and the speed of a cobra’s strike.
Bang! Just as my fist made contact with the nearest tree the death energy in my fist surged into the massive tree. The tree suddenly glowed black before it began to shrink and whither. Its life force withered away to nothing, instantly killing the tree.
Bang! The second punch knocked the now dead tree over. I once again disappeared into the forest moving like a shadow of death. The destructive power of the Withering Fist was amazing. The fact such a technique existed left me speechless. I slightly regretted not choosing body refinement as my course of study.
Though it was an impressive technique and I enjoyed using it I knew I couldn’t spend the rest of my life in this forest training. It was past time for me to return to my studies. Despite how amazing this Withering Fist technique was, it was no match for an army of zombies. That was one of the many reasons more people followed the path of the witch over the path of body refinement cultivation.
Using the Withering Fist technique against an army of already dead zombies would only result in the user’s death. The Withering Fist might even strengthen the zombies since it flooded whatever it hit with death energy and that was exactly what zombies used to fuel themselves.
I turned to leave when I noticed a large magnolia tree that stood in front of me. It would take four adults joining hands to encircle this tree it was so massive. It was a tree that was over a hundred years old. Despite that it only took one solid punch from me to kill it, though it took several more to knock the tree over. Each punch landed with great force, and I could feel the amazing power of this technique in my arms. I had to admit I really enjoyed this type of training over pouring over a book for hours and hours at a time. Just being outside in nature instead of a dusty library was exhilarating. My knuckles were bleeding by the time the huge tree fell.
“Healing Angel Hands,” I said aloud as my hands began to glow with a golden light. The cuts on my knuckles stopped bleeding and the tissue began to slowly scar over. The bruises on my knuckles also disappeared. I had learned the first part of Healing Angel Hands as well. With all of these different techniques I was a much more rounded fighter. I walked out of the forest, cracking my knuckles as I went.
Chapter 9
The next day I was sitting in my first class with Nyxra’s face less than five inches away from mine. She smelled wonderful, like roses and sour patch dragons. I found out later this was her favorite candy. She loved how they would fly out of the bag and breathe out little specks of red sugar. She was wearing a cute black top, perfectly fitted to show off her curves. Any man would be intoxicated by her beauty. Since the last time I saw her she was dressing a bit sexier.
“What are you doing?” I was interested to know where this was going.
“Watching you.”
A shiver went down my spine. This girl totally liked me, despite the fact that she was way out of my league. An incomparably fierce aura suddenly burst forth from her deep, obsidian-like eyes. Her milky white skin only served to accentuate her deep, dark eyes. I knew one thing, I was in over my head.
“You’re not even in this class…” I whispered to her. This was anatomy, and she was only in my demonology class.
“I changed all my classes to match yours. I plan on sitting beside you in every one of them.”
I grinned a little at that. Who knew a stalker could be so sexy. I leaned back and did my best to take a deep breath. The sexual tension was so thick in the air it was making it hard for me to breathe. I was trying to calm myself, but my traitorous heart was beating a mile a minute. The fact my throat and tongue were dry and my heart was trying to rip its way out of my chest wasn’t helping either. I had to keep reminding myself to breathe.
With her face so close I couldn’t turn my head sideways, so I continued to look forward while she had her face pointed towards the right side of my face. I sat frozen like a deer in headlights. I had
a weakness for pretty girls, but this one took it to a new level. Where was a teacher when you needed one? I knew class should be starting about now.
I took another slow, deep breath, and then let it out slowly to calm myself.
“Are you stalking me?” I whispered to her out of the side of my mouth, making sure to continue looking forward.
“I find you… Interesting,” she said in a sultry voice.
I swear, I gulped. I tried to swallow like normal, but it turned into a gulp at that very moment. I felt like my own body was betraying me.
She licked her lips.
I thought my heart was pounding fast before. I tried to remember the symptoms of a heart attack. Was it normal for the left arm to go numb? That couldn’t be normal, right? I was both terrified and turned on at the same time.
“What is wrong with me?” I mumbled to myself quietly. I was unsure if even Nyxra could hear me despite being so close.
Luckily, I had Bob to break the tension. Good ol’ Bob, my best friend in the entire world. Bob was sitting on the other side of me and was watching us this entire time.
“If she kills you and eats your face can I have your stuff?”
I turned towards Bob, the atmosphere suddenly broken. It was nice to be able to breathe again.
“Thanks Bob, you’re a big help.”
I had very conflicting feelings. I knew he was joking, but I still wanted to feed him to a zombie, slowly. Despite that I was a little thankful to him for breaking the overwhelming pressure that Nyxra’s beauty had put on me. I gave Bob’s words a second thought. She wouldn’t kill me and eat my face right? I looked at her pretty face and dark lips. If she ate my face her lips would have to touch my face. That was similar to kissing, so was it really all that bad if she did eat my face?
Nyxra had already stopped staring at me and was currently watching as our teacher Ms. Valerie walked through the classroom doorway. In less than a second she went from super sexy seductress to innocent nerdy girl. I really enjoyed watching the transformation, though it happened so fast I was afraid I had whiplash.
I took as many notes as I could in anatomy in preparation for the final exam. Looking at my notes, I really needed to work on my handwriting. It was rather sloppy. We only had two more weeks left in class and we would be spending that time preparing for our final exam. I was unsure how Nyxra would pass her new classes as she had missed the entire semester. I decided not to worry about it since it was her problem. It wasn’t like we would get married or something one day.
Nyxra followed us to our next class, Ghost Studies. Ms. Felicity reviewed the material for the entire semester in preparation for our finals. Like Ms. Valerie’s anatomy class, both tests would be a fill in the blank test and not a project. Ms. Valerie reviewed the main points of what we learned during the semester. She also reviewed several attacks ghosts can use like Ghost Fear. It was an attack that increased ones fear, causing the person to either freeze up or run screaming. Since Ms. Felicity went over Ghost Fear in detail right before our test, I made sure to take good notes on it. It was almost guaranteed to be on the final.
I found Ms. Olga’s class to be the most interesting of the day. Our final would be on advanced zombie creation. We would have to create a high-level zombie if we wished to pass her class. Unlike the paper finals, this was a project that I would only have the next two weeks to complete. I was already planning in my head how to create a skeleton warrior. Regular flesh covered zombies were slow, smelly, dumb, and loud. You could kill them by setting them on fire or squashing their brains. Skeleton warriors were fast, hard to injure, and excellent at obeying orders. The only way to stop a skeleton warrior was to smash them into pieces.
To create a skeleton warrior on the level I wanted I would need to step outside my normal skill set and possibly even have to visit the school’s library. I was really excited about this project. Not only would I actually get to do real necromancy, but I would have a faithful servant for life. Not just a faithful servant, but one far more intelligent than a normal zombie.
Skeleton warriors could be trained to become skilled archers or powerful swordsman, and I had even heard of some that could do magic. A magic wielding skeleton warrior would be wonderful.
Our last class of the day was demonology. Demonology’s final was rather scary. Chaz divided us into teams of two. Each team would have to summon at least one mid-level demon on the schools summoning ground in two weeks. That is, if we wanted to pass his class.
I was teamed up with Nyxra by Chaz. She assured me we had this final in the bag and that she would do most of the work. I was fine with that, but I still wanted to work on it with her. I was worried about Bob though. I wasn’t sure if he was skilled enough in necromancy to pass. I looked over at Bob and his face was squinted up. I had seen that face before.
“I get scared when he gets that look,” I mumbled quietly to myself. Nyxra heard me and had also noticed the strange look on Bob’s face.
“Why? What does that look mean?” she asked as we both continued to watch Bob.
“It means he’s thinking,” I whispered to her.
“Wow,” she replied while we continued to watch Bob. I wished I had a bucket of popcorn.
The summoning ground was to the west of the school. It had been used for summoning for longer than the school had existed. In the past it had been used for human sacrifices. It is common knowledge among witches that you can use a human sacrifice to boost the power of a summoning. One of the main reasons the school existed in this spot was because of the summoning grounds. The repeated summoning had made it far easier to summon there than anywhere else in the entire world.
One of the students in class went up to Chaz to talk to him after class. I believe his name was Jeff. He was a taller student with short black hair. I missed most of the conversation, but I did pick up a few words.
“No sacrificing your teammate,” said Chaz calmly.
“What about other students that I don’t like?” Jeff asked in an innocent voice.
“NO SACRIFICING STUDENTS,” Chaz yelled at the top of his lungs.
“Geez you don’t have to yell,” Jeff said in an annoyed voice.
I made sure to lock our dorm room door that night. I advised Nyxra to do the same.
Chapter 10
I spent the next two weeks preparing for finals. I helped Nyxra on our demonology project, but the main thing I did for her was to gather the ingredients she needed. She had decided our best course of action was to summon me a demonic familiar for our project. She had already summoned one for herself, her cat, so she thought it would be great if I had one as well.
Since demonic familiars are very helpful and because she was already familiar with the spell, we both decided this was the best choice for us. Since I would be the one to receive the familiar it was only fair that I was supplying all the ingredients, many of which were very expensive. I also had to supply a large amount of blood as well.
Nyxra had only told me that she would need at least a gallon of blood. Apparently the blood had to be my own blood, something she hadn’t mentioned before. Luckily with my new body losing a gallon of blood had no negative effects on me. I was starting to wonder if I was even a witch anymore.
I spent the majority of my time working on my skeleton warrior, often working late into the night. I decided what I needed most was a skeleton with mid-range attacks with high defensive abilities. I would give it the ability to cast magic, though that would greatly increase the difficulty in creating my skeleton. Though it would be great to use it as a constant bodyguard I knew portability was also important. Unfortunately I didn’t have the necessary knowledge to make a skeleton with magical abilities that was portable. I had no choice but to visit the school library.
Whenever a student of the Freak College wished to learn new techniques outside of class or any obscure bit of magical knowledge they would come here. The library was in the center of the school. There was nothing special looking about it from th
e outside except that it was a larger building than the rest.
Inside, the floor was polished white marble tiles. Marble columns towered throughout the library. It had the stereotypical librarian, a lady at least in her fifties with her hair up in a bun wearing thick black rimmed glasses. Anyone that dared to make a noise was immediately shushed.
Despite the apparent normalcy of the library I was still excited beyond words. Inside these walls were bookshelves full of grimoires and other books on real magic. It was a collection of books that took the school decades to acquire at no small expense.
This was not a room full of books containing boring plays about dumb teens who ended up dying from stupidity and poison. The books here didn’t have stories about fake witches or fake fairies. The books in this library could show you how to open portals to hell or teach you how to speak the language of mermaids. This was a room for spell books that could change the very fabric of reality. Methods to raise an army of the dead or transport you to the other side of the universe existed within these walls.
I guess if you like to hang out in normal libraries with stories about white whales or math books that’s alright too. I mean, platypuses are kind of cool.
There were a total of three levels and on the first floor were just the most common of books. As soon as I entered the first level I was overwhelmed by the sea of books before me. A sea of books that I felt could drown me in their limitless knowledge. I could see one enormous bookshelf after another. Each contained countless books of different sizes and colors. As I walked amongst the towering maze of bookshelves I felt small and humbled. Most of all, I felt at home.
I headed straight towards the back of the library where the stairs were located and climbed up to the next level. The second floor had much more advanced spells, including books on golem making, enchanting weapons, and more. The higher you went the more powerful or profound the books were. I continued climbing the stairs until I reached the top. Only the rarest and most powerful spell books were placed on the top floor.
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